“Humans experience emotional engagement with animated characters, empathizing with happiness, sadness or other emotions displayed by the characters,” said Matthew Campbell, a post-doctoral fellow in psychobiology, and the lead researcher. “Previous studies have suggested this type of emotional engagement may be to blame when children mimic violent video games and cartoons, so we thought it important to learn more.”

Yawns were chosen for the chimpanzee study, since they are large, unmistakable expressions, and they are contagious – the way that smiles, frowns and fear are contagious.

The chimps yawned significantly more in response to 3D animations of yawning than they did to animated chimps making control mouth movements.

“Next, we want to study what aspects of animation make it more or less likely to be mimicked,” Campbell said. “One of the first things we’re going to look at is whether realism is important for the chimpanzees to empathize with what they’re seeing."

The knowledge gained could help in the design of animation to promote imitation, such as therapies for children with autism, or to limit imitation, such as violent video games.

1 comment:

Interesting! We just launched a concept for autistic children to learn about emotions, which this study supports in terms of the approach we chose. Children are supported in recognizing emotions through an animated cartoon character, which they also use to express and link emotions. Have a look at the instrument, called Snapje: www.emotiondiary.com